Last week, I wrote about authenticity – how customers are looking for an authentic and positive food and beverage experience. This leads to the simple conclusion about the Business of Food: Retailers can only maximise sales and generate profit if the product is great. Sales are driven by satisfaction.

Let’s start off by saying that commercial hospitality is everywhere we look. From our morning coffee to our brunch on the weekend. We are looking for the same thing – an authentic and positive food and beverage experience.

Food and hospitality has evolved into much more than just eating, it has become part of our customers’ lives and the communities in which we serve it

This is an exciting time to be part of the Food and Hospitality industry. Increased focus on eating and drinking from the media, customers and landlords means that innovation, competition and choice have never been higher.

In thinking about where we have been over the last 12 months and where we feel that the next year will take us, Future Food has distilled our observations into a few broad categories.

We are seeing the emergence of mindfulness programs, health checks, exercise promotions and social programs to promote wellness for staff members but the one we want to focus on is food - the enabling of good food choices and providing hospitality through a well-planned food and beverage strategy that keeps your employees not only nourished but also satisfied and happy. Here are the three main ways a curated hospitality strategy for your arts, cultural or education institution can promote productivity and keep your employee’s happy.

The successful centres around the globe are focussing on three key components. One point that we cannot express enough is that what was once a stock-standard formula for creating a mall that satisfied is no longer. Every community, every customer, every space in a different suburb, city or country demands something different and knowing exactly what that is is pivotal to the development and success of a centre. However, these three components are proving to be a common thread in the malls that are standing out from the crowd and defining them as ‘more than just a mall’.

On November 15th , the official winners were announced for the national competition and here they are, 2017's best bar, restaurant, cafe, retail and identity as determined by the Eat Drink Design jury.

The Eat Drink Design Awards are an annual event celebrating innovation and excellence in the design of hospitality premises of all scales and types, retail environments for the sale of food and beverages and visual identities for both. We’ve selected our favourites from each category within our hometown of Melbourne (plus one outlier we couldn't pass). Some we’ve tried, others are on the top of the list but all-in-all these are the places that are paving the way for great design in the hospitality category.

As a consumer, whether we like it or not, psychology has been used to determine the way we create and angle marketing and as we focus more on the customer, understanding the psychology of these people is a key part of business success. As an operator, there are many ways we can use this to our advantage to maximise sales opportunities and profit margins and increase customer satisfaction as well as return visitation.

We took five with Caroline Beresford of Caroline Beresford Design in Sydney to talk about the way in which interior design can enhance a hospitality concept and makes up such a large and important part of an overall hospitality business strategy.